Video: Fourtitude: Four Riders, One Altitude

Rocky Mountain’s riders are a diverse bunch–a fact the company takes pride in. With the Fourtitude video above, Rocky is setting out to show that its new Altitude bike line is equally diverse: to wit, four very different riders push the limits on one bike–Rocky Mountain’s Altitude 790 MSL.

What sets the Altitude and, for that matter the company’s 29er Instinct model, apart from other bikes on the market is the Ride-9 system shock mount system, which allows you to radically tweak the bike’s geometry and suspension characteristics. We’ve written about this several times before. Here, in fact, is just one review.

Rotating the two interlocking chips in the shock mount raises/lowers the bottom bracket half an inch and changes both the head and seat angles by as much as 1.7 degrees. At its steepest setting, the bike possesses a 68.3-degree headtube and 75.3-degree seat tube. In its slackest setting, those angles change to 66.7 and 73.6 degrees, respectively. Rotating those chips also tweaks the leverage ratio on the Altitude’s rear shock. In its slackest settings, the suspension has a more progressive stroke, which should help prevent bottoming out for riders pushing the bike hard over technical terrain.

Wade runs it slackest; Thomas runs it in slacker and progressive (forward and down, aka “Vanderham Mode”); both Dre & Gully run the bike neutral and progressive (furthest down).